After tea grandma took to reading the 'Noonoon Advertiser'—a four-sheet weekly publication containing local advertisements, weather remarks, and a little kindly gossip about townspeople. This was her usual Saturday night entertainment. Carry and Andrew went to town to participate in the unfailing diversion of a large percentage of the population. This was tramping up and down the main street in a stream till the business places closed, from which exercise they apparently derived an enjoyment not visible to my naked eye. Uncle Jake and Miss Flipp not being in evidence, Dawn and I were the only two unoccupied, and noticing that she was prettily dressed, I resorted to a point of common interest in promoting friendliness between members of our sex and invited her to look at a kimono I had bought for a dressing-gown.

This had the desired effect. A look of pleasure passed over the face that charmed me so, and she arose willingly.

"I'm glad it is my week to stay in and make the bedtime coffee," she said as we examined the gorgeous kimono, a garment of dark-flowered silk; and Dawn, having all the fetichly and long-engendered feminine love of self-decoration, was delighted with it.

"Put it on," I suggested, and the girl complied with alacrity. She did not make a very natural Jap, being more on the robust than petite scale, but she was a very beautiful girl. With my impassioned love of beauty I could not help exclaiming about hers, and the foolish platitude, "You ought to be on the stage," inadvertently escaped me, seeing this is the highest market for beauty in these days when even personal emotions can be made to have commercial value.

"Do you think so too?" she said eagerly, betraying what lay near her heart. "Do you know anything about the stage? You don't think all actresses bad women like grandma does, do you?"

"Scarcely! Some of the most sweet and lovable women I've ever seen are earning their living on the boards. I'm intimately acquainted with several actresses, and will show you their photographs some day."

"Oh, I'd love to be on the stage!" exclaimed the girl.

"Tell me why and how you first came to have such a wish."

"Well, it's this way," said Dawn, pulling my kimono close about her beautifully rounded throat and curling her pink feet on a wallaby-skin at the bedside as she sat down upon them. "I heard grandma telling you something about me this afternoon, and I suppose you think I'm a terrible girl."

"A beautiful one," I said, revelling in the curling lips and rounded cheek and chin.

"Don't make fun of me," said Dawn huffily, blushing like noon.

"Good gracious, now you are making fun of me. I'm only stating a patent fact. Mirrors and men must have told you a thousand times that you are pretty."

"Oh, them! They say it to every one. Look here—there's the ugliest little runts of girls in Noonoon, and they're always telling their conquests and that this man and that man say they're pretty, when a blind cat could see that they are ugly, and the men must be just stringing them to try and take them down. So when they say it to me I always make up my mind I'd have more gumption than to take notice, for I can't see any beauty in myself. I'm too fat and strong-looking; all the beauties are thin and delicate-looking in the face—not a bit like me. I know I'm not cross-eyed or got one ear off, but that's about all."

I had been wont to think the only place unconscious beauties abounded was in high-flown, unreal novels; but here was one in real life, and that the exceedingly unvarnished existence of Noonoon. Not that I would have thought any the less of her had she been conscious of her physical loveliness, for beauty is such a glorious, powerful, intoxicating gift that had I been blessed with it I'm sure I would have admired myself all day, and the wonder to me regarding beautiful men and women is not that they are so conceited, but, on the contrary, that they are so little vain.

"I want to tell you why I want to be on the stage. I couldn't tell how I hate Noonoon. It's all very well for grandma to settle down now and want me to be the same, but when she was young (you get her to tell you some of the yarns, they're tip-top) she wasn't as quiet as I am by a long way. Just fancy marrying some galoot about here and settling down to wash pots and pack tomatoes and live in the dust among the mosquitoes, always! I'd rather die. I'll tell you the whole thing while I'm about it. You won't mind, as I'm sure you have had trouble too, as your white hair doesn't look to be age."

Comparison of her midget irritation with those that had put broad white streaks in my hair was amusing, but the rosy heart of a girl magnifies that which it doesn't contract.

"Grandma wants me to marry. Did you see that fellow who was after pumpkins?—he ought to make one of his head, the great thing! Grandma has a fancy for me having him, but I wouldn't marry him if he were the only man in Noonoon. Do you know, they actually call him Dora because he was breaking his neck after a girl of that name. He used to be making red-hot love to her. Young Andrew there saw him up the lane by Bray's with his arm round her waist, mugging her for dear life, and then he'd come over here and want to kiss me! If he had seen me up a lane hugging the baker, I wonder would he want me then!" Dawn's tone approached tears, for thus are sensitive maiden hearts outraged by an inconsistent double standard of propriety and its consequences, great and small.

"Grandma says that's nothing if it's not worse, for that's the way of men, but I'd rather have some one who hadn't done it so plainly right under my nose; people wouldn't be able to poke it at me then. I've got him warded off proposing, and while I guard against that it's all right. Now, this is why I'd like to be on the stage. I'd love to have been born rich and have lovely dresses, and I'm sure I could hold receptions and go to balls, and the stage would be next best to reality."

"But why not marry some one who could give you these things?"

"Where would I find him? You may bet that's the sort of man I'd like to marry if I did marry at all," and the dullest observer could have seen she was heart-whole and fancy free. Certainly there would be a difficulty in procuring that brand of eligible. There was but a limited supply of him on the market, and that was generally confiscated to the use of imported actresses, and, could society journals be relied upon, it was the same in England; so Dawn showed good instinct in wanting to bring herself into more equal competition with the winners.

"Can you sing?"

"I've never been trained," she said, but at my request went to the piano in the next room and gave vent to a strong, clear mezzo. It was a good voice—undoubtedly so. There are many such to be heard all over Australia—girls singing at country concerts without instruction, or the ignorant instruction more injurious than helpful. These voices are marred to the practised ear by the style of production, which in a year or two leaves them cracked and awful. This widespread lack of voice preservation is the result of a want of public musical training. With all the training in Paris, Dawn would never have been a Dolores or CalvÉ, but with other ability she had sufficient voice to make a success in comic opera or in concerts as second fiddle to a star soprano.

"You must sing again for me," I said, "and I'll discover whether you have any ability." For the way to wean any one from a desire is not by condemnation of it.

"Don't you say anything to grandma about me and the stage or she'd very nearly turn you out of the house. You just ask her what she thinks of it some time, and it will give you an idea; but I hate Noonoon, and would run away, only grandma goes on so terribly about hussies that go to the bad, and she's very old, and you know how you feel that a curse might follow you when people go on that way," said the girl in bidding me good night.

Dawn had many characteristics that made one love her, and a few in spite of which one bore her affection. Her method of dealing with her native tongue came among the latter. It was reprehensible of her too, seeing the money her grandmother had spent in giving her a chance to be a lady—that is, the type of lady who affects a blindness concerning the stern, plain facts of existence, and who considers that to speak so that she cannot be heard distinctly is an outward sign of innate refinement. She had made poor use of her opportunities in this respect, but if to be honest, healthy, and wholesome is lady-like, then Dawn was one of the most vigorous and thoroughly lady-like folk I have known, and what really constitutes a lady is a mootable point based largely upon the point of view.